Non-Wood Forest Products and Sustainable Management

Non-wood forest products (NWFPs) encompass all biological materials other than timber that are harvested from natural and managed forests. These include fruits, nuts, mushrooms, resins, fibres, medicinal plants, bark and forage. Globally, NWFPs support millions of rural livelihoods, contribute to household nutrition, generate supplementary income streams and underpin cultural traditions. Ecologically, their sustainable harvest can reinforce forest biodiversity, regulate nutrient cycles and sustain habitat complexity. Integrating NWFPs into forest planning demands ecosystem-based management that balances extraction with regeneration, securing long-term resource availability. Key challenges include unclear property and access rights, opaque value chains, inconsistent reporting of production volumes and insufficient economic incentives for conservation. Emerging frameworks advocate co-production management of timber and NWFPs, whereby multifunctional governance, participatory decision-making and adaptive harvesting protocols are harmonised. Innovations in biorefinery and value-addition technologies are unlocking new markets for under-utilised residues, such as bark extractives, while social-science approaches elucidate actor networks that co-create value. A sustainable transition relies on policy reform, tenure security, stakeholder engagement and cross-sectoral collaboration to foster a resilient forest bio-economy that maintains ecosystem services and supports equitable development.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Non-Wood Forest Products and Sustainable Management publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in non-wood forest products and sustainable management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFPs): Biological materials harvested from forests other than timber, including fruits, nuts, resins, fibres, mushrooms and medicinal plants.

Co-production management: An integrated approach to forest stewardship that simultaneously manages timber and NWFPs to optimise ecological, economic and social outcomes.

Ecosystem services: The benefits that humans derive from natural ecosystems, such as soil fertility, pollination, climate regulation and cultural values.

Bio-economy: An economic model in which biological resources, processes and principles are harnessed for sustainable production of food, materials and energy.

Biorefinery: A facility or process that converts biomass, including forestry residues, into bio-based chemicals, materials and fuels through integrated fractionation and conversion technologies.

References

1. Bark extractives as sources of carbon-efficient functional precursors and materials. The Innovation Materials (2024).
2. Sustainable Forest Management Beyond the Timber-Oriented Status Quo: Transitioning to Co-production of Timber and Non-wood Forest Products—a Global Perspective. Current Forestry Reports (2020).
3. New Values of Non-Wood Forest Products. Forests (2020).
4. Innovation governance in the forest sector: Reviewing concepts, trends and gaps. Forest Policy and Economics (2021).